


The Songs of Lady Skorri

by illumynare



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Berserkers, Dismemberment, Gen, iron lords - Freeform, wild speculation about efrideet, wild speculation about everyone really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 04:45:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8876548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: In days to come, they'll say that the Lady Skorri rose from the dead with a song on her lips.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/gifts).



**A Song for Skorri's Rising**

In days to come, they'll say that the Lady Skorri rose from the dead with a song on her lips.

Some will say it reverently, rapt with admiration for the bard of the Iron Lords. Others will roll their eyes, scorn in their voices for the rhymester who must make iambs out of every victory, dactyls from every defeat.

They will all be wrong.

Skorri will correct none of them, because it's an excellent turn to the tale, bracketing her life with song like a chorus—

But the truth is this: she wakes gasping for breath, ribs aching. She is half-buried under a fall of rocks, and the first few moments of her Rising are spent desperately clawing her way out.

The first thing she says is, "Wait. If _I'm_ dead, then why are _you_ the Ghost?"

She does hum to herself, that first day as she wanders through the ruins, trying to find a memory among the skeletons and crumbled walls and blackberry bushes. A soft, aimless hum without tune or measure. (Her Ghost asks her to stop, and that's when she realizes she'd been doing it.)

But that isn't how she begins to sing.

Warrant, that's what the people call their town, nestled in the crook of two long hills.

"Warrant for what?" Skorri asks the blacksmith who'd offered her food in exchange for a day's labor chopping and hauling wood.

He shrugs. "Just a name," he says, and rips off another huge mouthful of bread.

The smith is less talkative than most, but none of the people in Warrant are curious about the world beyond their town. When travelers come up the east road—there aren't many—they will trade with them readily enough. But they have no use for their tales; they hardly even care that Skorri has risen from the dead, and has a Ghost floating at her side. They might have seen someone like her, ten years back, or twenty. A man passing through. He didn't make trouble and he didn't say, so what was he to the people of Warrant?

In a week, Skorri is sick of them.

On the eighth day, the Fallen come.

Skorri is one of the first to die, a Fallen Captain's sword rammed down her throat, slicing her spine in two. The world is choas and screams around her, and then it is dark.

When her Ghost raises her again, it is silent. Pale dawn light smears the eastern sky.

Around her, the ruins of Warrant smolder.

The smell settles into Skorri's hair and skin as she searches through the town, dragging out the bodies. Anyone who escaped, hasn't stayed. But she can name most of the faces she finds slack and dead. She doesn't think any have escaped.

"I feel like there's something I should remember to do," she says when she has finished digging the grave. The sun is high overhead now, blazing down on her neck. "Now. For the dead."

Her Ghost swirls. "I'm afraid . . . I don't know many human customs."

Skorri looks at the bodies she has rolled into the pit. She can name almost all of them. Perhaps no one else left alive can.

There is nobody but her to remember the annoying way Ulf cleared his throat _every_ time he spoke, and the delicious brown bread that Ulf's wife baked, the way their son growled at the other children but always had a spare scrap for the family cat—

Skorri had wanted to leave them, and now her voice cracks as she begins to sing their names.

* * *

**A Song for Efrideet's Glory**

In days to come, they'll sing of Efrideet blazing with anger as she strikes down her foes.

Skorri knows this for a fact, because she's going to write the songs that make sure of it.

She isn't thinking of Efrideet's songs when it happens. She is, in fact, thinking of Melig: the Risen warrior that Warlord Rience sent to face Jolder in single combat.

Melig is monstrously tall. There's a good rhythm in that: _Melig the Monstrous, he that adorns / His arms and his legs with Ahamkara horns._ He's ghastly pale as he lunges towards Jolder, more bone than man—if the Ahamkara whispers haven't eaten his mind out yet, they will soon.

Jolder dodges, the glitter of her cuirass blinding in the sunlight, and laughs as she throws a grenade that forces Melig back. Glorious, fits-into-iambic Jolder. Skorri's written songs about her just of the use of her name, and her now her mind flits through ways to describe Jolder's part in this battle—

It's barely visible, the dart that flies from the ranks of Rience's forces.

But everyone sees when its magnetic tip locks into Jolder's Ghost and sends out a crackling wave of red energy.

Jolder convulses, falls to her knees— _By Rience betrayed, / By treachery made / To kneel before—_

That's the nice thing about songs: when your head is wrapped up in linked words, when your mind is chaining more together, there's room for little else. Sure, there's white-hot anger— _that Traveller-damned Rience used a_ neurojammer _on Jolder's Ghost—_ but Skorri doesn't panic. She rhymes and she draws her rifle and she's really quite calm as Melig roars in triumph, his axe crashing down into Jolder's helm.

Efrideet's answering battle-cry is a wild, inhuman thing.

The newest Iron Lord is small, but when the battle-madness takes her, she's one of the strongest. And she doesn't waste time. Her feet land in Melig's chest, send him crashing backward. Skorri's already firing into Rience's forces, so it's only from the edges of her vision that she sees Efrideet rip Melig's head from his body and fling it at the enemy line.

Skorri thinks, _Well, that's a sight worse than her usual._

But of course, usually there's never any doubt that Jolder would survive a fight.

Then there's no more time for thinking, as Skorri summons Radiance and rains the fury of the sun on their enemies.

The songs come after, while Jolder is healing. She's alive because Saladin got to her side while Melig was still twitching, and wrenched the dart out of her Ghost, thought it tore his hands bloody. Even so, she nearly didn't make it: her Ghost couldn't manage to raise her again until sundown, which was pushing the known limit for any Ghost to bring one a slain Risen back to life.

Now Jolder is recovering, her Ghost bobbing shakily at her side, Saladin never far away. To Skorri's silent surprise, Efrideet is there too. She's always shy after the battle-madness takes her, and usually she disappears into the wilds, makes peace with herself away from the rest of the Iron Lords. Comes back with a smile and a tilt of her head that dare them to mention it.

This time, though, Efrideet hovers at the far ends of corridors, not speaking to anyone, but not letting herself get far away from where Jolder is staying. Skorri wonders at it, but it's hardly her business: she's writing a song for Efrideet now, but they've never been close.

One afternoon, though, she goes to looking for Jolder and finds her sitting on the side of her bed. Sunlight streams through the window, turning her red hair into fire; Efrideet sits at her feet, shoulders resting against her knees.

Jolder is braiding her hair. She seems to be making six plaits; three are already done. As Skorri watches, Jolder combs her fingers through the loose hair, and pulls out strands for a fourth braid. Efrideet makes a small, catlike noise of contentment.

It's no way to end a song of glory in war, and Skorri leaves the moment out of her verses. But she thinks of it again, in the days after Efrideet disappears.

* * *

**A Song for Jolder's Tomb**

In days to come, they'll sing of the Iron Lords battling SIVA.

Skorri doubts that now.

Songs are passed from mouth to mouth—like kisses, but with a lot less jealousy when you share them around—and there's no one coming out of here alive.

The swarms of SIVA mites swirl overhead in streams, like flocks of angry crimson birds. Gunshots rattle and boom; explosions flash in the distance. Skorri can hear the shouts of the Iron Lords still fighting. But there's no more fight left in Skorri; her legs aren't working at all, and she can only faintly twitch her hands. It's probably something to do with the red tendrils clinging to her robes, writhing at the edges of her vision. She's not sure if her Ghost is still _~consume enhance replicate~_

_~consume enhance replicate~_

_~consume enhance replicate~_

It's a short and boring chorus. No bard worth a pinch of salt would write it. SIVA doesn't deserve to defeat them if it can't outsing them.

But Skorri can't sing anything at all now. She tries, but her tongue is a dry, dead weight in her mouth, and every time she tries to link words together, they turn into _~consume enhance replicate~_

Jolder lies sprawled beside her, helmet cracked. But as Skorri watches, she shudders and wakes. She pulls the ruined helmet from her head and staggers to her feet, hefting a machine gun with stubborn courage.

There will be no songs of it.

Skorri knows this. Because she's dead. And there aren't any songs left in her head.

_Haha, a rhyme!_

But she wishes there were. She wishes she could sing, and have the world hear the song of Jolder as she looks around the bunker, sees the last, desperate battle—so many dead already—and knows what to do. As she readies the charges.

Skorri hums, a soft, broken noise deep in her throat. She remembers sunlight glistening off Jolder's red hair as she braided Efrideet's. That moment had never been put in a song either. If only she'd found a rhyme for it. If only Efrideet had come back. If only they could have seen the sunlight again.

If only.

The explosion is searing light and utter silence.

* * *

**Reprise**

A Titan and a Warlock sit together in the late afternoon sunshine, guns in their laps, a pile of half-dead SIVA parts lying between them. It's a grisly business, upgrading their weapons with the things they have killed, but it's what Guardians do. The Warlock thinks it's appropriate: as the Traveller plundered their dead souls to make warriors, they plunder their dead enemies to make weapons. The Titan thinks she'll strap any dead thing to her gun, if it lets her strike harder against the Dark.

"What's that you're humming?" the Titan asks.

"Was I?" asks the Warlock, startled. She pauses, then softly hums another few notes.

"A bit mournful," says the Titan, peering down the sights of her scout rifle.

"I don't know where I heard it," says the Warlock. "But since the Iron Tomb . . . I can't seem to get it out of my head."

**Author's Note:**

> Lore note: in the Iron Tomb mission, Saladin says that until SIVA, he hadn't known anyone with the Traveller's light could die. But the [Lord Felwinter Grimoire card](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/lord-felwinter) shows Felwinter intentionally permakilling a warlord by shooting his Ghost. It's also implied as a known danger in the [Lady Jolder card](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/lady-jolder). So I've decided to assume that Saladin was speaking more loosely, and just meant he hadn't really _believed_ his friends would die.
> 
> There is no reason to believe Efrideet was a berserker besides Jolder's remark that "[she fights better when she's angry](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/lady-jolder)" and the story about Efrideet using Saladin as a javelin. Which is not evidence at all; I just thought it was an interesting direction to run with the remark.
> 
> In conclusion: I <3 Skorri.


End file.
